


Boundless

by spontaneite



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Magic works differently, Season 3 Spoilers, Set in Season 3, Wing Care, Wing Grooming, Wing Growth, Wing fluff, Wingfic, callum grows wings the permanent way, significant attention to wing anatomy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21536692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spontaneite/pseuds/spontaneite
Summary: A powerful arcanum needs a powerful outlet. Where none exists, magic will create one, or kill you trying.Callum’s human body isn’t enough to withstand the boundless power of the Sky Primal. But magic always finds a way.(Or: Callum gains the Sky Arcanum, and swiftly thereafter begins to grow wings.)
Relationships: Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 154
Kudos: 810
Collections: Astral_Phoenix108's Library, Dragon and Elves, Not Just Human





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Preword:** For the record, I’ve been planning this story since s2, and wrote this chapter and most of the next in the week following the 10th October. I have edited this chapter by a very small amount to make it align more fully with s3 canon, mainly for descriptions of early season scenery. If s3 made you hungry for wingfic, you’ve come to the right place!
> 
>  **Story warnings:** I’m a lot more into wing and feather biology than a lot of wingfic authors are, and also I believe in making my characters pay for their goodies. As such, this story starts off much more ‘body horror’ than ‘glorious magic materialisation of wings’. As the story progresses, it’ll go into significant detail about wing-related anatomy and biology.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter warnings:** Blood, pain, body horror. Edging into gore territory for some of it, though it’s relatively short-lived. Also, milder warnings for suffocation and emetophobia.

The first time Callum cast _aspiro_ by virtue of his own arcanum, it was living triumph. A culmination of all the thought and fear and inadequacy that had chased him through the week, and the realisation of what his deathly dream had taught him. The magic of the Sky was around him and within him and _everywhere,_ and as he cast his spell it settled like a spark into his heart. He felt it every breath thereafter, every second, with every gust on the cliffside and glimpse of the blue-above shivering through him like another kind of life.

It settled into his blood like the air did, it coursed through his bones and flesh and sinew – the Sky was a part of him and he was a part of the Sky, the understanding of it sinking deeper and deeper with every minute that passed. By the time he’d said farewell to his brother, the arcanum was as viscerally-rooted in him as his own skeleton, a precious and irrevocable part of him; a channel that opened him up to the vast and boundless magic of the Sky.

He and Rayla and Zym walked to the Breach, and if he noticed the ache in his back, he thought nothing of it. After all, hadn’t he spent hours today convalescent upon hard stone? It was only to be expected.

\---

The second time Callum cast _aspiro_ from his own breath and magic, it was amidst heat and urgency and the dread of a rising sun. The magic surged in him as he spoke and wrote and _breathed_ , the feeling of it effervescent and electric at once, crackling in his blood and bubbling through every inch of him. It ached. It burned, too, but wasn’t that just the heat of the Breach? He worried more about directing the wind-gust from his lips, and watching Zym’s wings catch the air like twin sails, and seeing how great a shadow a young dragon could cast.

And when they were safely across, and Callum and Rayla threw their arms around each other from the pure relief of it, her arms around his shoulders were startlingly painful. Like pressure against a livid bruise. But the adrenaline of their success was enough to forestall the flinch, and she noticed nothing.

But when they drew apart, Zym cheerful and victorious between them, the ache at his shoulders didn’t leave. As though Rayla’s touch had wakened it, or perhaps awakened _him_ to it, and it became insistent enough that he paid it notice he hadn’t earlier.

“You alright?” Rayla asked, as she showed him along the canyon-paths into Xadia, as he twisted his hands behind his back to pat cautiously at his shoulders.

They _hurt_ , to the touch. Sharp and raw, like the worst bruises he’d ever had. Like blistering skin. “…My back is kinda sore.” He admitted, with a light frown. “Maybe I bruised it, or something.”

She blinked at him with a glimmer of concern. “…Well, hopefully that’s just from sleeping funny on a cave floor.” She offered. “Or maybe you hit yourself during your dramatic collapse earlier.”

He eyed her, fingers lingering on the fabric over his shoulders. “Dramatic collapse?” he repeated, uncomprehending.

Rayla averted her eyes. “When you…unchained the dragon.” She elaborated, and didn’t say _when you used dark magic,_ and he knew at her expression that she hadn’t quite forgiven him for that.

“…Maybe.” He agreed, uncomfortable, and thought of the way the power of it had swept through him, heady and dark and burning. How empty he’d felt afterwards; hollowed-out and aching, like an empty husk.

Sky magic didn’t feel like that. His second _aspiro_ had ached too, but not like the hollowness of the dark. Not like everything beneath his skin had been scooped out. More like…the magic had put too much back in. As if there was too large a force for too small a space, and his skin couldn’t quite hold it. He wondered, for a fretful moment, if the power of the Sky was too vast for him. If even the barest spark of it that was his arcanum was stifled in his too-human flesh.

Rayla watched him, unusually sombre, for a few more seconds. Then she reached out to pull his hand from his shoulder, and tugged him onwards by the fingers. “Come on, stop messing with it.” She said, deliberately light-hearted. “If you’ve hit your back you won’t do it any favours by picking at it.”

“I’m not exactly _picking at it.”_ He complained at her, but allowed himself to be pulled unresisting further into the Xadian borderlands, where the canyon-tunnels widened out into the bright glow of red rock beneath the sun, where that same sun gleamed upon something gold and glittering and _huge-_

“Welcome to Xadia!” Rayla said, and when she saw him staring, turned to follow his gaze. Like him, she saw the immense shining form of the Archdragon, stopped short, stared with perhaps more horror and less awe than he did. “Oh _no,_ ” She breathed, utterly dismayed. “It’s _him._ It’s Sol Regem.”

And then they were entirely too busy figuring out how to bypass a dragon to worry about his back.

(The third _aspiro,_ wielded against Sol Regem, might well have burned, and might well have seared; but there was no room around their desperate attempts to escape for him to notice it. If he was aware of the pain, it was in a very distant way, far-removed from the far more immediate issue of their survival. They passed into Xadia, and neither commented on the spell that had saved them.)

\---

Later, when they were together and more-or-less unharmed past the gauntlet of a former-King, there was a little more space to breathe. A little more space to feel the Sky brimming up against his skin, to feel the breath almost too-deep in his lungs, like there was too much of it, like the air was filling him up like a balloon and he’d burst any second-

He only noticed that he’d fallen when Rayla caught him, his scarf still a vibrant streak of red about her neck. “Callum!” She said, alarmed, as she insinuated herself under one of his arms to hold him up. She put her arm around his shoulders to complete the support – and at the slightest pressure against his back, he cried out in pain. She released him as though burned, and then barely managed to catch him before he crumpled fully to the ground. “ _Callum_ ,” She repeated, when all he did was breathe in quick shallow bursts, rather than answer. “What’s wrong? Is it your back?”

He was too-full of air, too-full of magic. He’d burst. He couldn’t breathe, but he had to. Near to hyperventilating, he sucked in more and more and more of the Sky with every second, and felt it brimming in his flesh, swelling his lungs, and it _hurt._ “No,” He managed, after another several conspicuous gasps. “I mean – yes – but not-“ He had to break off for another half minute, torn to pieces between the feeling that he _couldn’t breathe_ and the utterly paradoxical sensation of his lungs filled past their capacity. The primal panic of breathlessness was a far more immediate thing than the searing pain on his back, though, and so much harder to resist. “Can’t breathe.” He said to her, when he found enough space between _suffocating_ and _bursting_ to speak.

He barely had the presence of mind to see the worry written all over her as she ran her eyes over him as if to inspect him for signs of damage. “Haven’t you suffocated enough for one day?” She asked him, with some asperity, as if it could disguise the fear in her eyes. “I _hope_ you’re not planning on making a habit of this.” Gently, she pressed fingers against a point on his wrist, perhaps to feel the hummingbird-pace of his heart.

Callum tried to laugh, and the requisite loss of breath left him spluttering for long painful moments. “Sorry,” he said, once he had found some equilibrium again, and then descended once more into gasping, sucking in air as if there was none left in the Sky. But there was. There was _so much breath,_ too much, too much to hold-

“Dumb prince.” She muttered to him, worried but achingly fond. She supported him upright, so that he was sitting up, and held him there, a hand on each of his shoulders, carefully away from his back. “Callum. Look at me.” She said, with such sudden command that his frantic breath stilled for a second, just to look at her. He stared at her as she stared back at him, and clung to the eye contact like a lifeline in the tide of breathless panic. “…Good.” She nodded, a little, and he abruptly realised that he wasn’t gasping so desperately now. The breathlessness was a constant pressure, though, and as he noticed it he started wheezing again – Rayla shook him, and the surprise of it stilled him again. “Just breathe.” She told him, in a way that was by now terribly familiar.

Hadn’t he heard it, drowning in the dream-state? Hadn’t he heard her? Hadn’t he heard the words from her lips, before he heard them from his mother’s? “…Trying,” he managed, still caught in the eye contact like a ship to its anchor.

“I know.” She said. “Just…try to breathe more slowly. Deeper, I guess.”

He tried. It was hard when the gasps kept bursting into his attempts at deep, steadying breaths. Harder when the pressure of breathlessness increased, even as the pressure of too-much-air decreased. The former was harder to bear than the latter – suffocation was death, but pain was only pain.

…But, by the sharp and tearing ache in his chest, he was reminded that some pains did lead to death. His lungs felt too-full. Like they really _would_ burst.

He breathed through the panic, and did not suffocate, and did not rupture.

When his breathing was into more of a normal rhythm, and he seemed calmer, Rayla relaxed a little and lowered her hands from their urgent place on his shoulders. He managed to keep himself upright, and appreciated it more than he could say when she took and squeezed one of his hands. “Is it the dark magic again?” She asked him, after a moment, and he had breath enough to speak.

He closed his eyes, just briefly, and felt the Sky brimming beneath his skin. “ _No._ ” he said, shaking his head, vehement. “It’s not – it’s the _Sky_ magic.” In the new sense of calm, Zym finally found space to insinuate himself between them, settling his front paws into Callum’s lap and looking up at him with wide worried eyes. He lowered his other hand to the dragonling’s mane, and felt a little calmer at the contact.

He could feel the Sky beneath his fingers. It was in Zym, too, but…settled, in a way it wasn’t with him. It belonged.

“The _Sky_ magic?” Rayla repeated, after a second, clearly startled. “But – _why?_ It’s _Primal_ magic – it’s…natural.”

Water was natural, too. But it could still drown you.

He shook his head, almost more to clear the thought than as a response to her. “It’s too much.” He said, and then shuddered at expressing it. “It’s like – I’m filling up with Sky magic, and – and there’s no way out for it, and I’m just…” He raised the hand from Zym’s mane to wave frustratedly in the air. His voice trembled worse than his fingers. “It feels like I’m going to _explode._ I – I don’t think humans are made for Primal magic, Rayla.” His heart sped again, this time in a different fear, and she stared back at him with a furrowed brow. “I – I think I’ve really messed up.”

Having spoken the words onto the air, they felt too real. What if he’d messed with something he shouldn’t? What if – what if the dark magic was only the first thing he shouldn’t have touched, what if humans just _weren’t meant_ to use Primal magic, what if he’d bitten off more than he could chew and – _what if it killed him?_

This moment he lingered in, caught between breathlessness and bursting…he couldn’t keep it up, surely. Either he’d suffocate or he’d explode, and it was all his fault. His fault for grasping at something he was never meant to hold.

“Try casting a spell.” She said, after a moment, and the words were such a shock against his thoughts that they practically gave him whiplash.

 _“What?_ ” He demanded, breathing picking up again, even as he tried to calm it down. “I say I’m full of _too much magic_ , and your solution is _more magic?_ ”

She stared back at him, unrepentant. “Spells _use_ magic, right?” She pointed out. “Maybe casting a spell or two will let off the pressure.”

Callum blinked. “That’s….” He frowned. “That’s actually a pretty good idea.”

Rayla rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t sound so surprised.” She huffed. “Just cast your spell, alright?”

He considered her, and then considered the spell he hadn’t tried casting since the Primal Stone broke. The most powerful spell he knew. He nodded, slowly, and exhaled like it could relieve the pressure in him, and shuffled away. His fingers parted from hers, and still sitting, he raised them to draw in the air, the _opposite_ direction from her. “ _Fulminis,”_ He said, with the breath he had, and the magic…changed.

It had been building in him, swelling in him, as aimless and merciless as water straining at a dam. There had been too much of it to sit in his blood, too much to fit in his lungs, and it had _hurt._ Too much breath, too much air, with nowhere to go.

The spell awakened it. That aimless, ruthless pressure went hot and bright and fast, like the sear of a lightning-flash against unprepared eyes, and the unleashed magic screamed through him with terrible purpose. It shrieked from his fingers, incandescent and sparking, and cracked through the Sky to shatter the quiet like glass. And then – in that moment-

His hands flinched back from the dissipating rune as if from fire, and flew to his shoulders. He gasped with pain, and hunched forwards the better to reach it, to feel _something_ roiling beneath his skin, the lingering magic burning there like it had burned out of his fingers. Like it had unleashed itself upon some other conduit than a spell.

“Callum?” Rayla spoke, worried, when all he did was pat frantically at the searing pain on his back. “…Did it work?”

Was he imagining it? Was it just that his back was sore and swollen and the skin felt huge with the pain of it? Was it just his imagination?

“ _Callum._ ” She pressed, a second later, impatient enough that his head jerked over to look at her.

“Huh?” he thought. “I mean – yeah, kinda? But-“ The pressure that had built in him had released, in a way. He could feel it building again already, but – not all of that magic had gone into the spell. For a second – for a second, it had felt like – and now his back felt – but _surely_ he was just imagining things.

…Well, there was one way to find out.

“…Could you, um, feel here for a second?” He requested, awkwardly, fingers still hovering over the pain on his back. “But – carefully.”

Her eyes flickered between his hands and his eyes, wary, but she leaned forwards, reaching out. He moved his hand to let hers pat gingerly at the spot over his shoulder-blade, and-

Any hope he’d had of it just being his imagination was soundly dashed the second her hand shot away again, eyes flying wide-open with shock. “What _is_ that?” She demanded, in a strangled voice, nearly squashing Zym’s tail with how quickly she retreated.

He deflated. “I don’t know.” He admitted, a new fear beating in his chest. “It’s…I think it’s why my back is hurting.”

“ _There’s something on your back._ ” She told him, stridently, as if he hadn’t just figured that out for himself. “Is it – some sort of, I don’t know – did you break your shoulder, or something?”

For a second he entertained the brief and bloody image of a spur of broken bone jutting through his skin, and shuddered. “I _think_ I’d have noticed that, Rayla.”

Her eyes moved from him to do a cautious sweep of their surroundings, and she exhaled. “We’ll need to take a look at it.” She said. “But…maybe we should try to find a good place to camp, first. If you’re injured…”

He grimaced. They had very little in the way of supplies, which had been okay up till now, but none of them had got hurt up to now either. “Yeah.”

“Can you walk?” She asked, quick and practical, and he considered himself.

He felt…okay. His back hurt badly enough now that it seared through him in bursts of pain that… _pulsed_ , almost, like he could feel his heartbeat in the swelling over his shoulder-blades. But the pressure of too-much-magic and too-much-air was, for the most part, gone. He felt quite sure it’d be coming back, but….

“Yeah.” He answered, eventually, and rose to his feet.

She rose with him, and gave him a quick look-over before nodding. “Alright.” She said. “Let’s go.”

\---

It took a while to find somewhere suitable to stop. The dry, dusty canyons of the borderlands began to give way to red rock studded with greenery, little waterfalls coursing down the vast cliffsides. In the distance, he could see the edges of a vast forest, but by mutual decision they made no attempt to reach it that day.

Instead, they settled for a sheltered little hollow in the rock, close enough to a river that he could hear the water burbling someway off towards the forest. By that time, though, the pain of the _something_ on Callum’s back had magnified considerably, and he was gasping and wincing every time he moved. Every step felt like it jolted the searing, swollen agony that was building there, enough to send shocks of pain through much of his body. The fabric of his clothing over the skin felt too-rough, abrasive, and the whole area _burned._

When at last Rayla ordered him to sit down and get his shirt off, he was almost too relieved at the prospect of – of removing the abrasion, finding out what was on his back – to be embarrassed.

Almost.

With Rayla’s help, he peeled off his jacket, gingerly enough to not pull unduly at the now very pronounced distension of his upper back. Then his shirt went too – and with only the thin undershirt in the way, it was evidently concerning enough to look at that Rayla cursed quietly. And then, feeling increasingly chilly and increasingly exposed, Callum divested himself of his undershirt, and understood the severity of whatever was going on by how utterly _silent_ Rayla went.

“…What does it look like?” He asked her, once the fear of not-knowing had surpassed the fear of knowing, and the silence had stretched too long. “Rayla?” He prompted, anxiously, when she didn’t reply.

Very gently, she reached out and touched her fingers to the inflamed skin on his upper back. He flinched and jumped a little at the touch, her fingers almost startlingly cold on the burn of it. “….There’s something sort of…pushing up underneath your skin.” She said, after a moment, with the barest tremble in her voice. “In two places. Here,” Her fingers drifted, touching skin that wasn’t quite so painful, and then over to something that _seared._ “And here. Kind of….a little to the up and middle of your shoulder-blades, stretching down to here, on both sides.” Her fingers moved again, carefully gentle, and trailed a line down to maybe the middle of his torso. “It…looks pretty symmetrical.”

When she stopped talking, the silence resumed. He wasn’t at all sure what to say, and had to fight off the fear that gripped at his throat and made him feel increasingly breathless, increasingly – oh, but no, that was the…Sky-magic-thing, wasn’t it? He shivered, feeling the magic building in him closer and closer to that strange crisis point he’d reached earlier, not quite yet enough to hurt yet, but enough to make him want to gulp in air like he was drowning. And that was a thought, wasn’t it. “My back got worse when I used _fulminis._ ” He admitted, a little hoarsely. “It was – almost like I could feel something _moving._ On my back.” He shuddered, all over, at the revulsion of the sense-memory.

She hesitated. “I’m…going to try pressing on it a little, alright? See if I can get any clues about what it is.”

He gritted his teeth, and nodded, bracing himself. “…Okay.” He said, grimly. “Do it.”

He exhaled roughly through his nose, stifling a cry, as she palpated one of the unnatural masses under his skin. It was unbelievably painful. It was beyond anything he’d ever felt. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on what she was saying, when she began to speak. “It’s…solid.” She informed him, voice a little choked. “Not just…bloody swelling or soft tissue or anything. I’m pretty sure there’s bone in there.” She prodded a little harder at one point, near the top end of a shoulder blade, where the distension was worst. “And there’s something at the top here, on both sides. Something sort of…a little pointy, poking at your skin.” She paused. “On the left, actually, there’s _two_ little pointy spots.”

He shuddered, half with horror and half with pain. “What _is_ it?” He asked at last, desperate, even though he knew she hadn’t any more idea than he did.

“…I don’t know.” She confessed, quiet, and drew her fingers away. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

He’d known that would be the answer. But it didn’t make it any easier to hear.

\---

She located the nearby river, and brought him to its edge to make him drink. Then, carefully, she slathered cool-wet river silt against the hot agony of his back. It helped, a little, but not enough.

It was at least warm enough in the Xadian borderlands that it wasn’t too cold to go shirtless for such a long time, but when he’d tried to put a shirt back on, the pressure against the growing _things_ under his skin was too much to bear. And they _were_ growing. Rayla said she could practically see it, hour to hour, stretching his skin out until red-raw lines were drawn upwards to the peaks of the swelling. It felt like his skin was tearing every time he so much as moved a muscle, and she admitted that she wouldn’t be surprised if it really _did_ start tearing soon.

Callum had thought, after that spell earlier, that the horror of his back was related in some way to the Sky Magic. It made him dread the way that the energy built up in his blood, the way his lungs started feeling too-full again, too full to breathe. He lingered on the edge of the suffocation, gasping frantically again, until Rayla clutched at his hand and said “Just _cast another spell_ , Callum. It helped last time.”

“Last time,” He huffed, light-headed and fearful, “it made my back worse. Don’t want-“ He paused to gasp in six more frantic breaths. “Don’t want to get worse _again._ ”

She shifted, uncertainly. “It…might not be because of that.” She said, though she didn’t sound especially convinced by even her own words. “It could be something else.”

He snorted amidst the feeling of his lungs straining, straining almost as much as the distended skin of his back. Tearing and stretching and- “Like what?”

“…Dark magic?” She suggested, though only half-heartedly. “That’s _actually_ unnatural.”

“I think I’d have-“ He gulped air. “I’d have noticed if – Lord Viren – or Claudia – turned into – hunchbacks, Rayla.“

She watched him gasp, increasingly anxious, and finally snapped “Callum, you _can’t breathe._ Even if it does make your back worse – you _have_ to cast something!”

He didn’t answer, and remained steadfast in his avoidance for about another minute of gasping for breath around straining lungs before he got light-headed and faint enough to agree with her. Torn two-ways by fear, he raised a finger and drew _aspiro._ He barely had enough breath to whisper it, but it was enough. The terrible over-pressure of breath and magic gusted out of him, potentiated into the purpose of the spell, rushing through his body and – and out three channels. One, his mouth, breathing the spell, and the other two-

The pain leapt and tore and _burned._

Something gave way.

He wasn’t aware of much more than screaming, the seconds after he cast the spell, but when he regained some measure of awareness….the pressure of the magic was quiescent again, and…the pressure in his back had lessened, just a little, too. There was something warm dripping down his spine.

“…Okay, you’re right, it’s definitely the Sky magic doing it.” Rayla said, voice tight, and he realised that she’d been squeezing one of his hands the whole time.

“…My back,” he started, a little numbly, and tried to use his other hand to reach behind, to feel… “I’m – am I bleeding?”

She hesitated, nodded, and then dropped his hand to go have a better look. “The poking-bits have…” She swallowed, looking a little green, and turned aside for a few seconds to suppress a gag. “Well, they’ve gone through your skin, now. They’re…pointy. Whatever’s under your skin is bigger, too.”

He closed his eyes, and drew his fingers away from his back bloodied at the tips. “…right.”

Rayla had to take several more deep calming breaths before she could investigate further. “At least we’re next to a river.” She said, determinedly, and ushered him to the water again. “Let’s get this cleaned up.”

True to her words, she cleaned the blood from his back, of which there was quite a lot, draining from the blood-swollen tissues around the distension. With some of the pressure relieved, it…actually hurt a fair bit less, but it was still _awful._ And then, with the bleeding stopping, and his back clean, Rayla made her assessment of what had poked through his skin.

“There’s four. I think?” She said, poking at each of them in turn. “Small. Black and sharp. They look like claws.” She hesitated, and poked at the swelling behind the claw-things. “I think they’re on…I don’t know, fingers? Two on each side. And something underneath.” She frowned, and prodded something a little more purposefully. He felt something under his skin _move aside_ from the pressure, and he shuddered. “…Definitely something underneath these.” She concluded.

He was silent for a while, processing that. “So, what.” He said, finally. “Am I growing a couple of weird clawed extra arms, or something?”

“ _Arms,_ ” She muttered, almost scornful, and leaned away to shuffle around to his side again. “Honestly, Callum, if it wasn’t for the claws – and for them being all the way up on your shoulders-“ She stopped.

He eyed her, curiosity piqued, despite the ongoing pain. “What?”

Rayla frowned. “Sky elves.” She said, without preamble. “Sky _wing_ elves. Some of them have wings, you know.”

He stilled, and it felt like his heart stilled too.

“…But they have their wings lower down – sort of mid-back, underneath their shoulders and arms. And they don’t have claws on them.” She exhaled. “And they’re born with them, anyway, so – it’s not like-“ She waved her hands towards his back, very expressively.

Callum stared at her, his gut uncertain whether it was twisting or fluttering. “…I wasn’t born with an arcanum.” He reminded her. “But I got one anyway.”

She sighed, looking as uncertain as he’d ever seen her. “I get your point.” She said. “And I _suppose_ it would make more sense for you to be growing _wings_ because of Sky magic than – than some weird clawed arms. But it’s – it’s not _normal,_ Callum. I don’t know what’s happening to you.” She sounded almost hopeless, at that. Afraid.

Unthinkingly, he clutched at her hand again. Squeezed it to reassure _her,_ for once. “…well, whatever it is, we’ll probably find out soon.” He said, uncertain how he quite felt about that. “It’s been, what, half a day since I got my arcanum? It’s going _fast_.”

She glanced at him, side-long. “Magic speeds it up.” She noted, and he went still again at the implication.

“…You want to make it go even _faster?_ ” He said, aghast.

She shrugged. “Not _want,_ but…it’s probably an option.” Her eyes slid over his shoulders again. “Where those claws came through…it’s healing quickly. Magic-fast, even. If you keep waiting until you need to cast a spell again…you’ll probably just keep tearing your back open.”

He shifted uncertainly. “I don’t know, Rayla. Maybe it’d be faster to just…cast a load of spells and get it over with – whatever _it_ is, but…” He shuddered, at the mere thought of it. How much would it hurt, to have his skin roil and tear and peel away as the things on his back grew and grew and tore their way out of his skin all at once?

Rayla watched him, anxious but sympathetic, and squeezed his hand back. “…Let’s go to sleep, then.” She said, finally, glancing up at the growing gloom of the evening. “See how it looks in the morning.”

He exhaled, and nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

\---

He slept on his front, with his shirts and jacket draped over him like blankets. Zym curled up beside him, pressed to his side, and wormed his way underneath Callum’s arm until he deigned to hold it around the little dragonling. He wondered if Zym was missing Ez. He wondered what Ez would think of the _somethings_ growing beneath his skin. He wondered a lot of things, thoughts whirling and spinning around themselves, until he finally managed to slip asleep.

It didn’t last. He might have expected pain to wake him, but instead, it was the magic. He woke breathless and gasping, some hours into the night, chest tight and lungs swollen as the magic built in him to the point of pain again. He stumbled upright, dislodging Zym and waking Rayla, who sat straight up and rubbed her eyes, blinking blearily at him.

“Callum?” She asked, groggily, eyes settling onto his shoulders. “Y’alright?”

“Breath,” he explained, his whole upper back straining as he moved, and he turned aside to draw the zig-zagging shape of _fulminis._

Just as before, the aimless magic in his body shifted and awakened and _moved._ Unlike before, barely any of it left his fingers. The lightning-bolt that emerged was thin and sparking and did not travel very far at all, spilling only the barest smell of ozone into the air, and instead – instead, all of that electric energy surged into his back as though to a lightning-rod, and it _writhed._

He cried out with pain, Zym squeaking in fright and Rayla shuffling over to grip his hand, and familiar hot-wet spilled down his back again. Something had torn, again, more than yesterday, _much_ more-

Callum reached back, to _feel_ , to find out what had come through – and nearly vomited at the feeling of finding something small and limp and blood-wet and _firm_ hanging out of the skin there. It was warm. Warm like a limb. Warm like a living thing – but wet and tacky and too-soft, like the thin weeping skin under a blister. On the end of the horrible hanging thing was something small and sharp. The claw.

So…the ‘fingers’, that the claws were apparently on. One on that side, and….he checked…two had torn free on the right hand side. The second on the left was still under his skin. And…wait.

Was that a _third?_ He checked the other side, found something much like it in the distended shape of his skin, and felt his breath stutter with horror.

“That’s _horrible_.” Rayla told him, looking pale and a little green, as his fingers trailed blood over his upper back. There was so much pain now that it felt almost like he’d passed through it, to some numb other-side where nothing felt right and his thoughts were strange and scrambled.

“Mmhm.” He agreed, a little vacantly, moving one of the clawed-things between his fingers. It _felt_ like a finger, slim and bony, even if the skin was all wrong and it was covered in blood and had _torn its way out of his flesh-_

“We need to clean you up again.” Rayla said, decisively, and moved to herd him over to the water again. He could hardly see anything around them, given the time of night, but the moon was past half-full and cast just about enough light to see by.

“…Wait.” He said, after a moment, and her fingers stilled on his arm. He breathed, not-quite-awake and not-quite-coherent, uncertain if he just hadn’t woken up properly, or if the pain had just…disconnected him from a proper feeling of consciousness. “You were right. I should just…get this over with. It’s not going to stop. So…I should just…” He squeezed his eyes shut.

Cautiously, she took his hand, and pulled him to his feet. “Are you sure?”

“No.” he admitted. “But I don’t want to keep waking up and – having to cast a spell and tear myself open again. Once these…. _whatever,_ once they’re out, it should be better. Right?”

“…Well, in theory, you won’t have anything trying to break out of your skin anymore.” She said, dubious, and a little wary. “So, I guess?”

He sighed. “This is going to suck.”

“It’ll also be pretty bloody, I think.” She nodded, looking as though she were trying not to think about it too hard. “So let’s get you to the water for this anyway.”

Once they were there, and Rayla had washed some of the blood off to see the new developments with his back, she reported on the state of things and confirmed his uneasy sense-impression of what he’d felt through his skin.

“It’s grown in the night.” She said, of the distension as a whole. “One of the clawed…fingers…is still under your skin. And…” She shivered, close enough to his side that it made the fabric of her sleeve brush against his shoulder. “And, I think there’s…three. Fingers, I mean, on each one. The third ones are still…inside your back.” Her eyes squeezed briefly shut, as if to forcefully expel the image from her mind as well as her eyes.

“…Thought I felt something like that.” He said, quiet and pale, mind too numb with shock and pain to offer much more than delirious dread. He _had_ felt something that felt disturbingly like another digit, underneath the right-hand two that had torn out.

Rayla looked side-long at him, hesitating. “…Honestly, Callum? It might hurt less if – if we _cut_ it, instead of letting your skin rip open.” Zym, who seemed to understand them quite well, quailed at the words, crooning and shrinking back.

He blinked, startled, not having thought of that. “With one of your swords, you mean?” He asked, and reached to the side to pat Zym on the head. After a second, he drew the little dragon into his lap. He wasn’t a human kid, maybe, but this was still kind of more gore than he was comfortable with Zym seeing. If he was in his lap…he at least wouldn’t _see_ it.

At his words, though she seemed distinctly sickened at the notion, Rayla nodded.

It was probably a bad sign that he found the idea a relief. The clean cut of a blade seemed so much more merciful than skin strained to tearing. “Good idea.” He said, and wondered at how swiftly his life had gone weird, to make such a thing a sensible and _merciful_ option.

Still, she hesitated, hand on the hilt of one of the weapons hung at the small of her back. “…Now?” She asked, unhappily. “Or when you cast the spell?”

He considered it. “….during the spell.” He decided, reluctantly. “That way we can get it all done at once.” Nausea rose in his throat, and he carefully swallowed it away.

Rayla shuddered. “…Alright.” She said, visibly steeling herself, and he heard the _shnk_ of her blade assembling as she moved behind him. A couple of weeks ago, he’d have done nearly anything to keep her blades away from him, and now he was _inviting_ them. The world was mad. “Go ahead.” She said, and lowered the tip of the blade against his skin, cold and sharp, just below the protruding left digit. He braced himself, and raised a hand.

Fulminis was somewhat easier to deal with, since he didn’t need to do any gusty exhaling for it, so he drew its rune crackling in the air. This time, when he spoke it, there was no well of expanding magic pooling and stretching him out from within – instead, it coursed in from the Sky, that inner-spark of the arcanum opening and welcoming it in. A little of it went to its proper place, coursing along his arm, but only a thin crackle and a few sparks emerged. The rest…

It surged to his back, and at once, the flesh beneath his skin swelled and grew and _roiled_ , pressing and stretching and expanding into a searing, tearing pain. And then-

The sword was sharp. Incredibly so. There was barely any resistance at all as it parted his skin and the thin layers of flesh below it – it was so sharp and clean a cut that for a second, it almost didn’t hurt. He gritted his teeth and hissed and gasped, but even then – even then, there was such a _relief_ to it. He could feel the horrible straining pressure easing even as the magic of the spell coursed in and in and in, even as the _somethings_ under his skin grew, and grew, and finally-

Where Rayla had made the cut on the left, something spilled loose. Something heavy and fleshy and soft, limp and bloody, dropped out of the open wound and thumped wetly against his back. He heard Rayla gag, and felt nausea surge in his own throat at the mere feeling of it, but – she stayed her course, and moved her blade over to the right to repeat the cut.

The energy of the spell ebbed, even as the cut widened and the incredible relief repeated for the other _thing,_ the wet meaty limb spilling down along his back in a trail of blood and gore. He clenched his fingers in Zym’s mane, stomach roiling. Voice hoarse, he asked “Is it all out?”

She gagged again, but answered anyway. “Think so.” She said, shakily, and moved to the side to wash her hands and blade in the water. “Feel for yourself.”

He wasn’t really sure he wanted to. Even the sensation of the _things,_ wet and warm down his back, was viscerally disgusting, and his throat already felt fluttery with nausea. Still, though, he couldn’t quite restrain the morbid curiosity, and moved one hand from Zym’s back to feel around at his own.

His hand landed on something warm and wet and sticky. The skin was…thin, too thin, like something malformed and underdeveloped, and it was _growing out of his body_ but he couldn’t _feel_ it, couldn’t feel his touch on it, it might as well have been – have been _something else,_ something not-him, something alien, something parasitic, _growing out of him-_

He lurched forward and vomited, managing to avoid Zym entirely. The dragonling scurried out of his lap in a hurry, yipping with alarm, and stared at the puddle of sick with wide-eyed consternation. Then he looked over Callum’s shoulder, and shrank back.

“It wasn’t much nicer to _watch_ it, believe me.” Rayla told him, dryly, as she came over to gently bring him over by the water, steering him with careful fingers at his arms. “Come on. Let’s clean you up. Wash your mouth out.”

He was entirely too shaken to make any sort of comeback, and just nodded, leaning forwards to slip his hands into the water and wash the blood off and then cup some water from further up-river to his mouth. He washed out and spat it to the side, even as Rayla gently set to work cleaning the blood off his back and the _things_ with water and a few wet river-leaves. He still had open wounds, of course, and she muttered a little worriedly about getting river-water in them, but…in the end, it wasn’t as though they had anything to boil water in.

Finally, his back was apparently clean enough, and she patted him on his clammy-wet shoulder. “That’ll do it for tonight.” She said, tiredly. “Wish I could bandage you, but…”

“No bandages?” He guessed, and she nodded.

“No bandages.” She agreed. “You _are_ healing already, though. It’s already scabbing around the…” Her voice went odd. “…limbs.” She decided, eventually.

“…So that’s definitely what they are?” He ventured, brow furrowed. He reached over his shoulder and found, indeed, that the cuts she’d made and the tears around the protrusion of the _things_ were already near-firm with hard coagulation, even though she’d just been at him with water. It was astonishingly painless, compared to how it had been not fifteen minutes ago.

“Can’t you feel them?” She asked, after a moment. Tentatively, she reached out, and he could guess that she picked up one of the limbs by the lessening of the sensation of weight, pulling at his shoulders.

He shook his head, unsettled. “I can’t feel them at all.”

Rayla grimaced, and then, not looking terribly pleased about it, gently manoeuvred the thing down and around to his side, so that he could actually see it. He twisted to stare at it, morbidly fascinated, the nausea lessened now that he’d already vomited.

“That’s _gross,_ ” he noted, almost fascinated now, and made a face as he reached out to touch it. It was _warm_ , and that was _even more_ disgusting, somehow.

She let it fall into his hand, and he inspected it. There was a joint at the end, like a wrist joint, with something that wasn’t really a hand hanging there limply. There were, at any rate, three digits, all of which clawed. The first digit was half the length of the second, which itself was half the length of the third. All of them had as many joints as a normal finger would, but the proportions were all wrong – stretched-out and heinously alien, not even close to human. With a raw, shocked sort of apathy, he took the shortest in his fingers and bent it, pressing the sharp point of the claw against his thumb.

“…Is there an elbow joint?” He asked, though he was already checking. In short order he felt along the limb and found it, and hummed pensively at the discovery. Oddly, the discovery of the joints made him feel a little better about it. The limbs were disgusting, and he couldn’t feel them, and he hadn’t asked for them, and it wasn’t even slightly normal to grow two extra limbs on his back – but, at the very least, they had an almost soothing structural similarity to his arms. An elbow and a wrist and a hand each. It was a paltry thing to be comforted by, but it was something.

“You really can’t feel them?” Rayla checked, again, fingers reaching tentatively out to poke at the limb in his hand. He could guess what she felt, when she touched it, by how it felt on his own hands: warm and somehow tacky, even with all the blood washed away. The skin didn’t feel right. It wasn’t like normal skin – it was….thin. Delicate, in an alarming way that made him feel he could rip it with the slightest pressure. Like he _would_ rip it, if he weren’t very very careful. “They look…sore.”

“It’s just my back that hurts, around them.” Callum said, making a face at the two alien fingers on one of his new limbs. His new, limp, utterly insensate limbs. “I can’t feel any of _this._ It’s like-“ he swallowed against the taste of acid, against the shape of the thoughts that had horrified him earlier. “It’s like it’s – not even _me._ Just…something growing out of me.”

Rayla shuddered at that too – and for a long moment, he was suddenly, overwhelmingly grateful that she was here with him. Here to help him, here to empathise with the visceral horror of what was happening to him, just… _here._

“Maybe that’ll change.” She said, softly, and he wasn’t actually sure whether he agreed or not.

If he never felt anything from them – if they stayed these disgusting, insensate _things_ hanging from his body…that would almost be easier to deal with. At least then he could…look into getting them cut off, or something. But if he could _feel_ them – if they really did become a part of him, these things that were on his back but _shouldn’t be –_ that was somehow a whole lot scarier. What would that even _mean?_ “…I don’t even know what they are.” He said, a little plaintively. “I don’t even know why they’re growing. No one _else_ grows weird gross extra limbs from their backs like this.”

“No one else gets a sparkly new arcanum years and years after they’re born, either.” She pointed out, and he huffed, reminded of what she’d said before.

“So, what? Are they arms? Useless featherless wings? Something else?” He questioned, looking down at the disturbing tiny hand-joint thing she was still gingerly holding. Three-fingered, it looked nothing like a proper human hand – not even an elf hand – and the proportions were all wrong.

“If it’s an arm, it’s not like any I’ve ever seen.” She answered, after a moment, peering along the wrinkly too-thin skin, as if she were looking for something. “As for wings…I don’t know. I’ve never seen a Skywing without feathers, but…I’ve never seen the wings of a baby, either. Pretty sure they’re not _born_ with feathers, so...”

“Too early to tell?” he suggested, and she shrugged helplessly at him. He sighed, and inspected the limb as best he could by moonlight. “Well, I guess it does look kind of…baby-skin-ish.” He concluded. “Like _newborn_ baby-skin, I mean – all red-looking and wrinkly and gross.”

“…Well, they’re developing fast.” She said, dubious, and withdrew her fingers from the senseless skin. “Maybe they’ll look less gross and sore-looking and wrinkly by morning.”

Callum wondered, for a brief and distant moment, as if he should maybe be a little bit put-off by her using those descriptors, even though she was mostly just quoting him. After all, these new…things…were ostensibly part of his body, so shouldn’t he feel defensive about their appearance?

But he didn’t. All he felt was a sincere echo of her own sentiments and her own disgust as he looked at the limp _thing_ in his hand. It didn’t feel like a part of him. It didn’t feel like a part of him _at all._

His gut twisted, and he shivered. “Maybe.” He said, a little tightly, and dropped the limb. It dropped back down, sagging against his back with the other one. A small, insistent part of him was screaming to _get them off,_ in an instinctive revulsion he couldn’t quite manage to displace. He swallowed against the nausea again, and tried to put the thoughts aside.

Rayla looked at him, for a long moment that he spent mostly trying to wrestle his gut into some semblance of good behaviour. He’d really like it if his stomach would stop roiling at every reminder of the things that had burst out of his upper back. “…If you think you can, it’d be a good idea to try to get to sleep.” She offered, eventually. “It’s still the middle of the night – and we have a long way to go.”

He frowned….but nodded, reluctantly. “I don’t know if I can.” He admitted, and thought the reasoning needed little explanation. “But I’ll try, I guess.”

As if encouraged by the words, Zym took that opportunity to butt his head under Callum’s hand, crooning a little when the motion automatically earned him some scritches around the horns. The little dragonling looked up at him in a way that suggested he was entirely ready for some nap-time, preferably with a large warm cuddle-buddy.

Zym hadn’t been this touch-hungry before, he didn’t think. Not when Ezran was here. Still…

Callum smiled, gentle affection replacing the churning in his gut, and reached out to hoist Zym into his arms as he stood. The new limbs swayed and slapped a little against his back as he moved, but he tried not to think about that.

“If nothing else, Zym definitely needs sleep.” He said, and tucked the dark blue dragon-wings neatly under his arms. Zym craned his neck backwards, trying to look at him, and then broke into a sharp-toothed yawn. In the contagious way of yawns, he was returning it a second later, abruptly more tired by all the pain and stress than he’d realised.

“Looks like Zym isn’t the only one.” Rayla observed, lips twitching, and then ushered him gently over to where they’d been sleeping.

Laying down took some arrangement, this time. He had to avoid laying on the new limbs, and somehow manoeuvre them into a comfortable position despite not being able to feel or move them. They were a strange, warm, foreign weight against his back. Eventually, Rayla took pity on him and tucked them inwards on his back, draping his jacket over him.

As a finishing touch, she picked up Zym, picked up his arm, and then planted the dragonling beneath it. Said dragonling chirped happily, and shoved his snout into Callum’s armpit. “Sleep.” She ordered him, or perhaps ordered them both, and slipped with a smile on her lips to lay just a little way beside him.

As unsettling as everything had been…it had been exhausting, too. He’d thought he’d stay up a long time, thinking about it all, but instead…

Instead, he closed his eyes, and fell asleep almost instantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes:** This chapter is the bloodiest by far. There might be small bloody moments in the future, but from now on it’s just steadily decreasing amounts of body horror and drastically increasing amounts of inconvenience, indignity, and fluff. There’s also potential for a more complex magically-rooted plotline eventually, but it depends on what I plot out. Could just end up being a relatively straight s3 fic with wing-related divergence points, could be very very different. We’ll see. 
> 
> I really do mean it when I say I’m going to go very in-depth with the wing biology stuff. This will, in places, be slightly gross. Callum may be done with most of his pain but I have so many other ways to make him suffer.
> 
>  **World notes:** Magic works a bit differently in this AU, which is why Callum is growing wings. Callum’s wings are also very different to an elf’s, and to the mage-wings as seen in canon. Still, there will be a whole lot of wingfic stuff and wing-fluff, which I imagine many of us are very hungry for after s3.
> 
> Hope everyone enjoyed s3 as much as I did!
> 
> Feedback and kudos etc very much appreciated. Chapter 2 is mostly done, just need to adjust it for s3.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the degree of wing growth is both startling and problematic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: Body horror. Dysphoria? Some level of dysphoria and dissociation.
> 
> Spoilers for s3e2.

He woke up to the sound of Rayla cursing quietly over his head, and stirred. “Rayla?” He mumbled, incoherent and slurred from the edge of sleep. “Whas’wrong?”

She was silent for long enough that he opened his eyes, blinking blearily to resolve the shape of her, to see what she was doing. “…Sorry for waking you.” She said, softly, as if still trying to preserve his slumber. “You can sleep a little longer, if you want.”

He was a little more concerned about the barely-leashed fear behind her eyes. He fought towards alertness, and pushed himself up, and-

The new-limbs slid across his back.

Heavy. Heav _ier._ Larger than he remembered – enough that he shot up the rest of the way in alarm, hands coming around to feel one, and-

“ _Holy-_ “ He yelped, cutting himself off more from shock than anything else. “Rayla, is that – did it really-“

“They’ve grown.” She confirmed, tightly, and shuffled over beside him, seated on her knees. “A _lot._ ”

Still a little numb with shock, he took it by the base of a clawed finger and pulled it out from his side. It had felt so disgustingly heavy and meaty and foreign last night, when it was comparatively _tiny,_ but now?

Now, the thing was – it had to be nearly as long as his _arm,_ if perhaps somewhat slimmer _._ And the other one undoubtedly matched it. He wasn’t entirely clear on how big they’d been when they came out, but – if they hadn’t _doubled_ in size, they couldn’t be far off it. “It’s only been a few hours.” He muttered, reeling, and stared at the skin of it in the merciless light of day. Maybe Rayla had been able to see this, what with her better night vision, but – it really was kind of disgusting. The skin was a dark fleshy pink, and disturbingly translucent. He could see the lines of blue veins running along the limb. He could see _muscles,_ and – and tendons, and… “What are those?” he wondered, a little confused, and poked at what looked like a strange black dot underneath the skin, one of many arrayed against the outer edge of the limb. They extended all the way along the longest finger on the hand-joint, too, but not either of the other fingers.

“…Your guess is as good as mine.” Rayla said, voice strained, and reached out with a wavering hand. “Can I…?”

He blinked, almost surprised that she’d asked. “Of course.” Slipped from his lips, a reflexive response, and a little embarrassing for it. Still, she reached out to touch at one of the many black dots, and frowned a little.

“There’s something under there.” She concluded, after a little prodding. “I thought I saw these last night – but they’re more obvious now. They’re poking at the – your skin, a little.”

His stomach twisted. “So not only are things bursting out of my back, but they’re bursting out of the things that burst out of my back.” He said, a little sourly. “Great.”

She shrugged. “At least you can’t feel it?” She offered. And then-

Then, as if solely to spite her-

The limb _twitched._

She jumped back from it as if it were a snake, rather than a limb of dubious and unpleasant provenance. He did more-or-less the same thing, but as it was attached to his body, this was not especially helpful. The end result of this was that he ended up half-fallen over on his side, staring at the ugly fleshy limb hanging over his side with wide and wary eyes.

“Did that just-“ He started, at the same time as she said “It _moved!_ ”, and they stared at each other for a moment of mutual astonishment.

“…Can you feel anything?” She ventured, after several seconds had passed, and the limb was still laying there placidly.

“…Not that I’ve noticed?” he answered after a moment, and pushed himself back up. After all, he’d just been pretty much _squashing_ one of the limbs, and hadn’t felt anything, so he didn’t exactly expect that to have changed. Still, though….Cautiously, he reached out and poked it, and…still felt nothing.

Rayla eyed it pensively, and then, without warning, reached out and pinched its skin sharply between her nails.

It twitched violently away – spasmodic and uncoordinated, but….moving. Moving and responsive. As if it were capable of responding to pain that he couldn’t actually feel. He eyed her, not certain whether he should be peeved at the pinch or not. After all, he hadn’t actually _felt_ it, but…

“…You really didn’t feel that?”

“Not at _all._ ” He said after a second, admittedly bewildered, and poked and prodded at the limb some more. It didn’t provoke any new response, though, until a few seconds later it just sort of twitched mildly on its own. One of the clawed fingers at the end flexed in a spasming, jerking movement, and then went limp again. “…That’s kind of disturbing.” He observed, as clinically as he could when it concerned something growing out of his own body.

A second later, their observations were interrupted as Zym, apparently oblivious to all of his, rolled over in his sleep and onto his right wing. Both of them quieted, reminded that _one_ of their party was still trying to sleep, and then communicated in a series of wordless glances and pointing gestures the need to remove themselves to a little further from the sleeping dragon.

They ushered themselves further over by the water, leaving Zym nestled amongst their bags. The back-limbs swung on his back as he walked, and as he came to a stop, twitched all-over in a spasmodic motion that fluttered against the skin of his back.

Rayla looked at his back at the same time he craned his neck to look over his shoulder. “…Do you think they’re going to start moving on their own? Like, properly?” She wondered, as if speaking an idle thought aloud, and he shivered.

“I _really_ hope not.” He expressed fervently. “That would be _beyond_ creepy.”

“…You’ll probably be able to move them eventually.” Rayla offered, in a sentiment that would have been more reassuring if she didn’t sound so uncertain about it. “They’re still pretty…red and raw-looking. They’re probably still…developing.”

He eyed the limb at hand with dislike. “I mean, they do still look…baby-skin-ish.” He agreed, deeply sceptical of his (alleged) own flesh. “But I’m pretty sure babies’ arms _work_. Maybe these will just…hang around uselessly forever, making it stupidly hard to wear shirts.” He contemplated his own ongoing shirtlessness, wondering how he was meant to actually _wear clothes,_ now. Surely the addition of two giant stupid back-arms would make shirt-wearing a challenge?

“Twitching?” She suggested, looking as if she were trying very hard not to find morbid humour in the situation.

“Twitching through shirts,” he agreed, with deliberate levity, and saw her suppress a smile. “Everyone will think I’m hiding a couple of lizards in my jacket, or something.” He recalled some of Ezran’s more audacious attempts to bring animals into the castle, and the corners of his lips turned upwards.

She huffed, amused, and shook her head. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon, if nothing else.” She said, which cast something of a pall on what little lightness he’d managed to muster. She was right, of course. The things had doubled in size in a few hours, so if they were likely to develop further…it’d happen soon. Sooner, probably, if he used any spells.

He frowned, suddenly, something about that thought prodding at him. “…Rayla,” he said, slowly, and her eyes went a little more alert, chin rising to look at him questioningly. “How long do you think it’s been? Since I, uh, cast a spell the last time?”

She blinked, tilted her head as if focusing on something, and ventured “Around five hours?”

Unease settled like a leaden weight into his gut. “….It was maybe a couple hours between the first two times I had to cast a spell.” He said, mostly to himself. “And then…longer, maybe? Three hours? And now…”

Understanding dawned in her eyes. “You didn’t wake up.” She realised, following his track of thought. “That weird…sky-magic-breath-thing – it’s not happening again?”

Callum took stock of himself; of the breath in his lungs, the Sky filtering leisurely into his blood, the arcanum within that welcomed magic in every time he inhaled…

There was magic in him. There was magic _everywhere_ in him. But it wasn’t too much. It wasn’t building, wasn’t pooling, wasn’t stretching his lungs out until they felt fit to burst…

Slowly, like a foregone conclusion, he became aware of where exactly it was draining. To his fledgling magic-sense, the Sky was in him, and flowing through him, and…draining, very efficiently, into the new limbs in his back. It was disconcerting to be able to feel the flow of magic inside their blood-supply, when he couldn’t feel them at all by the more native sense of touch.

“The magic’s going into them.” He said aloud, nonplussed by this perfectly logical turn of events. It _made sense,_ what with how everything had happened, but still… “It’s like…before, it had nowhere to go – or it _did,_ some of it was going into…these _things,_ but – it wasn’t flowing right? There wasn’t enough…room? I don’t know.” He puffed out a breath, frustrated by the difficulty of putting it into words.

Rayla frowned at him. She was far from the most magically-learned person in the world, but she at least tried to understand his arcanum-and-magic stuff, and he appreciated that. “…It drained it all out when you cast those spells, though.” She pointed out.

“Maybe that’s because some of it went out through the spell, so there wasn’t….a blockage?” He suggested, a little helplessly, then shook his head. “No, that’s probably not right.” He sighed.

Gingerly, she patted him on the shoulder. “They’re _your_ weird-arm-things, Callum.” She said supportively. “And your Sky arcanum. I’ll do my best, but…” She shrugged. “Not exactly my area of expertise.”

He smiled half-heartedly at her. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.” A horrible thought struck him, and he stilled. “I wonder if my spells are even going to _work,_ now.” His own words set his gut to squirming with awful, sickening dread.

She blinked, clearly not following. “…What?”

“The last two times I cast a spell – it didn’t really come out right.” He recalled, thinking of a wind-breath that barely gusted, a lightning-bolt that barely sparked, a spark that barely _fizzled…_

“I thought that was because you were out of breath and panicking.” She said, and then frowned with him. “But – no, that last time yesterday, you were fine. Well, fine, except for the…” She waved at his back. “You-know.”

‘You-know’, indeed. He supposed there weren’t a lot of diplomatic ways to say ‘the limbs that grew under your skin until they started tearing their way out of you’. “It was like all the magic went into _these,_ instead of into the spell.” He remembered, uneasily, casting a look to the one in view. He lingered, uncertainly, knowing what he _should_ do but not quite managing to find the nerve for it. “Like…there wasn’t any magic left over to do anything. So it…didn’t come out right.”

“Are you going to try it?” She asked directly, cutting straight to the heart of his newest anxiety.

He twitched. “…I _should._ ” He said, as if to himself, with deep reluctance. Rayla looked at him expectantly, and he twitched again. “It’s not that easy, though.” He defended. “What if-“ The words caught in his throat, for a second, and then came out sounding uncomfortably afraid. “What if…it doesn’t work?”

The fear hung in the air along with the words he’d uttered, unexpectedly galling.

What if it didn’t work? What if, after everything he’d been through, and everything he’d gained – he couldn’t even cast spells anymore? What if the things on his back just…sucked it up, and always would, and he’d just be a weird magical human with weird magical limbs who could still never have the magic he actually _wanted?_

Rayla looked at him, sympathetic and firm at once. “Try it.” She said, offering her hand. “There’s only one way to find out.”

He took a deep breath, reached out to clutch at her fingers, and exhaled. “…Okay.”

With her other hand, she reached out and patted him on the bare arm, and abruptly he almost forgot to be afraid because he was too busy being self-conscious about the amount of skin he was showing. He felt his cheeks heat, and he looked away, reminding himself that he’d been shirtless all morning and all night and he should be _used_ to it by now, and really it wasn’t like he could _help_ it…

“Okay.” He said, more firmly, at least half to put a stop to his rambling thoughts. His gut clenched tight with dread that he tried not to focus on too much as he – _not thinking about it,_ not thinking about what it’d mean if he failed – extended his hand to draw a rune into the air.

Aspiro, this time. His first spell. His easiest. The one he knew in his breath and blood, now, knew in the spark of a Primal nestled beside his heart. To his new understanding of the Sky, it was a perfect spell, a reflection of what the magic _was_ in its purest form. He breathed into the Sky, and the Sky breathed into him. He _understood_ this spell, now, in the same instinctive way that he understood the beat of his heart.

It should be easy. A spell that spoke to the breath of the Sky….it should be the most natural thing in the world.

He touched his finger to the air, inhaled magic, and-

The rune-light came as easily as it ought. The word, when he spoke it, came easy, too. The magic coming in from the Sky, coming in through his arcanum – it flowed like the unhindered wind. Easy, open, _effortless,_ full of the pure exhilaration of the open air. But that was where the ease ended.

It started as it ought. The magic followed the spell into his breath, pooling in his lungs and following it up the centre of his chest as he began to exhale, chasing the air-

And then it stuttered, falling from the breath like a stone from a cliffside – and where it fell it was snatched away. It only took an instant. Just that. Nothing more than a second…and the _things_ on his back, quick and remorseless and greedy, stole the magic away. All of that power, all of that boundless, exhilarating energy…just _gone._

He blew out the breath anyway, even knowing that the spell was broken, even knowing it wouldn’t work. The air tumbled from his lips, and was nothing more than itself. Just breath, rather than Breath. Just air, rather than the issue of the Sky. Just empty, barren, powerless air.

The sheer, gutting failure of it hit him like a physical blow; he crumpled forwards, and hardly noticed the weight increasing on his back.

He only realised he was crying when Rayla took him by the shoulder and turned him around. He only had a second to blink at her through tears, only a second to realise that there _were_ tears, and then she pulled him into a hug. He shook a little as her arms closed around his back – surely having to negotiate around the presence of those awful, magic-stealing _things_ now – and buried his face gladly in her shoulder.

“It didn’t work, Rayla.” He mumbled, distraught, into the fabric of his own scarf around her neck. “It _didn’t work._ ”

Her arms tightened. “…I know. I’m sorry, Callum.”

“It’s _gone._ ” The words tumbled out of him, all misery, all hopelessness. “My magic – I only had it back for – for maybe a _day._ And it’s _gone.”_

A beat, and then she drew him back from her, as easily as if picking up a ragdoll. He blinked at her, eyes bleary and cheeks tear-stained. “Hold on a minute, let’s not go _that_ far.” She said, voice firm, but carefully gentle. “Your…Sky arcanum. You still have that, right?”

For a second the question sounded absurd. Of _course_ he had the Sky arcanum. She might as well ask him if he had blood or skin or hair – and then he managed to think past the utter _depth_ of his arcanum to remember that he’d not always had it. That it wasn’t even really a day old yet. “Well…yeah.” He admitted, uncertainly.

“There you go, then.” Rayla nodded, with a small encouraging smile. “You’re still a magical creature, if you’ve got that, right?”

His eyes flickered down to his still-bare chest, as if he could see the Sky rooted there, as if it ought to be apparent as soon as anyone looked at him. It felt like it should be. It felt so much a part of him that he could hardly imagine that people would be able to see him without instinctively _knowing_ that he belonged to the Sky.

“….I guess.” He admitted, more reluctantly. “But – Rayla – my _spells._ You _saw –_ I didn’t manage to make _anything_ come out. Not even a little breeze. These – _things,_ ” he bit out the word with something close to vitriol, waving over his shoulder in an almost vicious motion, “They just….take all of it. There’s nothing left for me to _use._ ” Hopelessness encroached again, with the certainty of loss. “I’ve _lost it.”_ Without spells – he might be magical, but…he wasn’t a _mage._

Rayla looked at him, worried, brow lightly furrowed. “Well, you’ve only tried one of your spells so far.” She pointed out. “Do you think it’ll make a difference which one you use?”

Hope sparked for a second, but he quelled it, not wanting it to gain too much ground. Still, though… “I don’t see why it would.” He said unhappily.

She sighed at him. “Don’t be so pessimistic. Just try it.”

He wavered, for a while, staring back at her in consternation. He didn’t want to try it, he realised. He didn’t _want_ to try it…because what if _fulminis_ failed, too? As long as he didn’t try, as long as he didn’t _know_ for sure…he could pretend that he still had the magic he’d fought so hard for. The magic that felt _right._ But, the second he drew that rune, and nothing came out…he’d lose that.

It was like the not-quite-secret of Harrow’s death, in a way. Something he _knew,_ but…wasn’t at all ready to face.

Except he had to, didn’t he? He had to know whether he could cast spells or not. He _had_ to. He had to try it, even if now…even if he was pretty sure that the unwanted limbs on his back would steal all the magic out of it.

He exhaled, feeling the magic travelling on the breath. Magic was in him, still. Coming in on the breath, filtering through his lungs into his blood, travelling along the slow path on his bloodstream to the magic-stealing limbs…and that was the passive way they drew in magic, wasn’t it? They’d sort of been doing that yesterday, he thought – taking some of the magical overload that had been building in him. But yesterday, there hadn’t been any way for the rest of the magic to drain. It had just…built up, an overpressure threatening to burst him. Until he cast the spells, and…it was redirected, somehow.

Now, the redirection wasn’t necessary. The magic had made its own pathways, beyond the slow natural journey of magic to breath to blood. And so…any magic that came into him, drained almost instantly away. Gone so quickly that there was nothing left for his spells.

_It’s not going to work,_ he thought to himself, with something like grief. A day, he’d had his victory. Just a day, or not all that much longer. For a day, he’d been a mage again.

Still, he raised his finger to the air. Because he had to know.

“ _Fulminis,_ ” he said, softly, like waiting for an axe to fall, and watched the rune-light sparking where his finger trailed. His arcanum sparked with it, opening wide as if to welcome in the Sky-

Magic crashed into his body, stronger than he’d ever felt it, and – and there was _so much,_ a flood of it, the Sky poured in and in and in and – and as he’d expected, the new pathways channelled it straight into his back, straight into the wide channels of magic that each limb represented-

-But.

But…not _all_ of it.

His eyes widened, the delay between speaking the spell and its inevitable failure widening, widening, widening – the magic finished crashing in from the Sky, and for a second, for just a second, there was enough of it that – enough of it to-

He pulled at the feeling of it with fresh desperation, the magic hot and electric alongside his blood, and what little had been spared followed the path he offered in a single searing instant. A lightning-bolt, thin and frail but so wonderfully bright, split out into the air.

“….Stronger spells.” He breathed, into the aftermath, into the lengthening moments of stunned quiet that sat between him and Rayla and the Sky. “That’s…that’s what I needed. Stronger spells. So there’s still magic left over from what these stupid back-things take.”

Quietly, Rayla reached out and took his hand, squeezing it. When he looked at her, she was wearing a smile, small but genuine. “See, sad prince?” She said, nudging him with her shoulder. “It’ll be fine after all.”

Callum exhaled, the relief shaking him to the bone. “…Yeah.” He said, quietly. “Maybe it will.”

The new limbs might be bottomless magic-hungry pits, sure, but…even they seemed to have limits. Maybe, if he used stronger spells, or figured out a way to draw in more magic at once, or to somehow control where the magic actually went…he’d be able to cast normally again. Even with these things on his back.

_I’m still a mage,_ he thought, with a relief so heady that it was exhausting.

Then: “Hate to rain on your moment of triumph,” Rayla started, apologetically. “But you might want to take a look at your back-things.”

He paused, abruptly aware of the increased sensation of _weight_ on his back, pulling around his shoulder-blades. Abruptly aware of, suddenly, the way that something _prickled._

“…Oh.” He said, faintly.

\---

In short order, they were examining his weird new limbs again.

“Arm out.” Rayla ordered him, and he complied wide-eyed as she pulled the left limb out by its longer finger to compare it to his outstretched arm. A very short while ago, it had been pretty much the same length, the tip of the longest clawed finger just about reaching the knuckles of his hand.

Now, it was almost a hand’s length longer, and already…it looked different.

The skin was a little thicker, a little less translucent. The veins beneath it weren’t so glaringly blue, and when Rayla pressed her fingers near the base of the whole thing, she claimed to find a strong and steady pulse there, as she would on the underside of his arm.

And, of course…the dark spot-things they’d both noticed had grown.

“They’re pressing through the skin now.” Rayla said, needlessly, as she’d pulled the limb around to demonstrate it to him. He could see quite well the way that the tiny dark spots had started growing outwards, like tiny rubbery spikes, almost translucent where they breached the skin. He pressed on one, gingerly, and found it smooth and cartilaginous. Behind them, a row more of dark spots had sprouted along the full length of both limbs, presumably to follow the progress of the first.

Rayla investigated the tiny row of spikes herself, following them along the edge of his back-arm to the elbow and then along to where the skin met his shoulder.

“There’s twenty-seven of these ones.” She reported, eyes narrowed on the foremost layer. “On both of them. Nine on the longest finger, nine on the wrist to elbow, and nine from the elbow to shoulder. Not sure about the rest.”

Callum tried to focus more on her words than the strangeness of watching her fingers on the rows of fine spikes. It was hard to pinpoint. Hard to identify. But…he could _swear_ that he could almost feel the pressure of the spikes being pressed against the skin. He tapped the limb to check, and still didn’t feel _that,_ but… “They’re so _weird._ ” He said, helplessly, after a moment. “Are they – I mean….” He bit back any further words, mind whirling.

Too soon to tell, she’d said. But that was before. Was that still true?

“…What do you think they are?” He asked, eventually, when she failed to answer his poor attempts at articulating his thoughts. “The…limbs, I mean.”

Rayla didn’t answer that for a few seconds either, casting an indecipherable look over the limbs attached to his back. Still, though, she plainly heard the unspoken words, and knew what he was _really_ asking. She poked at the tiny emerging nubby spikes, too, and he shivered. “…It’s not like I’m an expert in how wings work, you know.” She said, eventually, voice pensive, and the word _wings_ set something in his gut to churning. “And I’ve not exactly seen a lot of winged toddlers around.” She hesitated. “I’ve seen baby birds, though. Their feathers, when they’re still growing…they look kind of like really long spikes, growing out of the skin, all in rows.” She trailed a finger along the line of emergent prickly nubs, pensive. “In rows like these, I guess, though you’ve only got two rows starting so far.”

He swallowed. “so…you think they _are_ wings.”

She shrugged helplessly. “Either that, or you’re growing a set of weird spiky arms.”

Callum ran a careful finger over the tiny nubby spikes on the mysterious new limb, and felt words desert him.

Rayla noticed, and looked at him side-long from the corners of her eyes. “…You alright?” She asked, nudging him, and he exhaled.

“…I don’t know?” he expressed, conflicted, his maybe-wing still in his hand. She didn’t speak, just watched him, until he managed to find enough words to describe the mess of how he was feeling. “I just…don’t know. Like…it’s all happening so fast. A day ago – or maybe a little longer – I didn’t even have an arcanum, and now…” he pressed his thumb firmly into the flesh of the not-hand, and….and, he thought he felt something of it. Not a sense of touch as he was accustomed to, but a sense of pressure. “…Now, I might be growing wings.”

“Could still be spiky arms.” Rayla offered, in a plain attempt to be light-hearted. He couldn’t quite manage to smile at it, and she softened. “Well, at least wings are useful.” She said after a moment, as if trying to be reassuring. “If they’re anything like an elf’s, you should even be able to fly on them, once they’re done growing.”

He tried to think of the idea of flight. It couldn’t quite break through the numb shroud of shock of confusion that still hung over him, heavy and oppressive and bleak. “…I can’t even _think_ about that right now.” He muttered, in the end. “I just – this is already… _so_ much.” He raised a hand to his face as if to hide behind it, suddenly overcome in a way he couldn’t quite explain. It was just – _so much._ He’d not even adjusted to having magic, and then these _things_ had started growing out of his back and they might be wings and he could hardly cast spells anymore and – and there was _so much._ What was he meant to think about _any_ of it?

She regarded him for a few long moments, then took his hand. “It’ll work out.” She said, with a gentle smile. “Until then…” She squeezed his fingers, and nodded back to where Zym was still dozing in the morning light. “We’ve got a journey to make.”

The words were a breath of fresh air, in a way, and he laughed with dazed amusement. Because _of course._ He could gain an arcanum and have a pair of wings erupt bloodily from his body, but life went on. The war didn’t particularly care about his turmoil, and Zym still needed to get back to his mother. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

Rayla smiled a little more widely at him, as if sensing the near-calm the thought had brought him. Then she rose, pulling him up with her. “Come on.” She said. “Let’s wake up Zym, and get going. Lots of ground to cover today.”

As she said this, she looked out at the prevailing greenery with almost a hint of…excitement, or trepidation, or both. He would have asked, but she exhaled quick and fast, as though steeling herself, and pulled him determinedly off towards their things.

\---

In the end, Callum did not like the idea of travelling through Xadia shirtless, so they had to delay setting off for a while longer to sort out his clothing situation. Given the increasingly large new limbs on his back, this was something of a conundrum.

His undershirt wasn’t even an option now, given it only had a couple of buttons. That had been fine when they were getting it off of a distended back, but was less fine now, when they needed to work around two significant obstacles. He packed it away, mournful, and turned to his sleeveless red shirt.

First they tried just putting it on as normal, essentially strapping the probably-wings to his back. This seemed like it might be successful, up until the right one twitched and the first claw poked cheerfully through the fabric of his poor shirt. “Okay, so much for Plan A.” Rayla said ruefully, as she peeled the shirt off him again to show him the hole.

He made a face at it. “Yeah, let’s…try not to actually wreck my clothes.” He said, with visions of entire clawed fingers breaking through his formerly-nice attire. “It’s not like I have a lot of them. So, er…” He frowned. “What else can we try?”

Dubious, they made a half-hearted attempt at a Plan B, which involved putting his new limbs through the shirt arm-holes, essentially putting the thing on backwards and buttoning it at his back. This let the new limbs hang out unrestrained, but left his arms pinned to his torso, which was decidedly not ideal. Rayla got a couple of chuckles out of that one, at least, so it wasn’t entirely a wasted effort.

“Okay, so maybe let’s not sacrifice your arms to the cause.” She said, lips still twitching as she removed the shirt yet again, considering. As she held it up, he was momentarily struck again by the commonality in colour between it and the scarf she still wore. He hadn’t thought she’d be _keeping_ it, when she took it to distract Sol Regem, but with all the trouble they’d had with the Sky magic and his new back-limbs since then…well, she’d apparently forgotten to give it back. It sat well enough around her neck that he couldn’t quite make himself ask for it back. He smiled at her, gut fluttering in a not unpleasant way, and then belatedly remembered to focus on what she was saying. “But you know, I think we might be onto something, with putting it on backwards.”

He eyed it, and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” He folded his arms, sceptical, and experienced a brief moment of disorientation at the fresh reminder of how shirtless he was. It was so _awkward_ to be so unclothed, especially outside, especially in the open, and _especially_ in front of Rayla.

“Trust me.” Rayla insisted, seemingly oblivious to his renewed discomfort at parading around in front of her shirtless, and he sighed. Sensing his capitulation, she flashed him a smile and ordered “Arms out!”

Obligingly, he followed her directives, and she pulled his arms through his sleeves…again, with the shirt on back-to-front. He couldn’t see what she did next, but he could infer from the shifting of the weight of his new limbs that she was moving them around, and then…a little of the cool air on his lower back eased off, as buttons were fastened into place along his back.

He blinked, and turned his head over his shoulder to try to see what she was doing. “Oh,” He said, surprised. “I should have thought of that.”

It was a decidedly awkward solution, but…a reasonably workable one. She’d buttoned his shirt up to where the limbs emerged at his upper back, and then insistently pulled his collar and upper two buttons closed at the top. It left a gaping diamond of skin of his upper back exposed, with the still-translucent skin of the prone limbs hanging down over his back, but…

“…That could work.” He decided, surprised, and adjusted his shirt as best he could to make it sit a bit more nicely. Even if Rayla had managed to actually get it on him, it wasn’t exactly comfortable to wear it back to front, and not even fully buttoned. He reached behind him and tried to smooth down the line of fabric that kept the buttons mostly invisible. “…Are you sure there’s no way to tuck these in, though?”

He didn’t need to specify what ‘these’ were. Rayla considered it, then went rummaging in his bag again. After a moment, she extracted the black cloak she’d used for her Human Rayla impressions, and he shivered a little at the sight of it. In his weird dark magic dream-quest thing, his other self had been wearing that. But…he supposed he couldn’t fault the utility. “This alright?” She questioned, apparently noticing his hesitation.

“…Yeah, that’s fine.” He said, determinedly, and she slung it over his shoulders. It couldn’t disguise the pronounced lumps on his back, maybe, but at least he wouldn’t be walking around with them looking all exposed and fleshy and flappy.

He took a step, and immediately proved himself wrong; the wings swayed limply and swung briefly out of the cover of the cloak, jarringly pale and alien to look at. He sighed.

Rayla winced, and folded her arms. “Well, then….” She trailed off, frowning, as she tried very hard to figure out some way to stop his wing-arms dangling and flapping every-which-way as he walked. “Well. I think…you’re either going to have to carry them over your elbows or something, or…”

“Or…?” he prompted, leadingly, when she didn’t continue. She was staring at his back, brow furrowed.

“Or, we use your jacket to tie your wings down?” She suggested, after a moment. Needless to say, they’d not even _tried_ to get the jacket on him, when the shirt alone had been so much trouble. He still felt a little strange and exposed without it, thoroughly unused to being all in red again, and to having his arms all exposed. It was strange to look down at his arm without seeing blue. But…well, the jacket might manage as an improvised restraint or sling of some sort, he supposed.

He sighed. “Well, at least that way I don’t have to carry it.” He said philosophically, and Rayla went around to enact the plan.

It was not especially elegant, but she did tie the wings to his back, the sleeves of his jacket tied around his front, and the hand-joint of each appendage hanging over the jacket-rim at his back. He put the cloak back over the whole mess, and walked in an experimental circle.

“You can see the lump under the cloak moving a bit, but at least you’re not flapping everywhere.” Rayla reported, almost satisfied. “It’ll do. Finally!”

He observed her familiar sort of impatience with a weary air. “Time to get moving?” He asked, and hefted his bag. He’d never been grateful for it only having one strap yet, given that tended to lead to one very sore shoulder, but in this case….in this case, it being a single-strap bag meant he could actually _wear_ it. Carefully, he slung the strap of his backpack over the other shoulder, and straightened.

Rayla nodded, briskly, and ducked to the side to pick up Zym and thrust him into his arms. “Time to get moving.” She agreed, and ushered them onwards towards the distant forest.

\---

Zym, when they woke him up, had proven exceptionally astonished by the growth on Callum’s back.

That astonishment had not subsided significantly since.

Callum sighed and bent his neck forwards as Zym, yet again, slung himself around his shoulders as though acting as a blue draconian replacement for his scarf. A blue, unusually active scarf. A scarf that kept sticking his nose down the collar of the cloak to nose at his new set of shoulders, and therefore, not really anything like a scarf at all.

“ _Zym.”_ He complained, without any particular animus, at the warm feeling of dragon-breath whuffling down his back, where a diamond of skin was still exposed. “Do you _have_ to keep doing that?”

The dragonling surfaced briefly to croon insistently at him, and then promptly buried his face under the cloak again.

A moment later, he reached out with a paw to bat and prod curiously at the new limbs there, the backs of his own wing-fingers poking Callum in the back of the head. He tried to turn to look at him, and promptly took a dragon-tail to the face. Raya, pitiless, snickered at him behind her hand. “He’s really fascinated with them.” She remarked, all cheer and light-heartedness, which was all well and good for _her,_ but _she_ didn’t have a young and very curious dragon messing with her.

“It’s just _wings_ , Zym.” He said, exasperated, over his shoulder. “Well, probably wings. You’ve got them too, you know.”

Zym determinedly ignored him, and batted at one of his wing-claws. Callum winced, and – well, that was the thing, wasn’t it? Zym was delightedly investigating the new appendages with all the brazen curiosity of a young child, and Callum…

…Callum could feel it. He thought. Probably.

It was inconsistent and weird-feeling and not-all-there, but….

He’d _felt_ that tug, a painful shove of a joint in a direction it wasn’t supposed to go. He’d felt the draconian snout nosing at the skin, albeit in a rush of half-numb half-prickling trickles that didn’t feel anything like normal skin should do. And, increasingly, there was this sense of…pervasive numbness. He hadn’t quite realised it before, but numbness was in itself a sensation, and before now…well, he’d not even had that.

But now, he thought, the wings felt numb. Heavy and ungainly and weird-feeling, like a leg you’d been sitting on for so long it had lost all feeling.

When he shifted, he thought he could feel the pressure of the jacket-tie around his wing-hands.

There was still absolutely nothing he could do about the twitching, though.

Callum winced as Zym – again – pulled one of the wing-fingers in a direction it did not like, and the whole set of digits jerked and flexed in response, sending the dragonling yelping back and up. He craned his neck to see around his shoulder, and surmised that Zym had gotten himself poked up a nostril by one of the wing-claws. He sighed, and coaxed the dragon off of his shoulders and into his arms. “Sorry, Zym, I didn’t mean to jab you.” He said to the little Dragon Prince, who suddenly looked pitifully betrayed. “I can’t control what they do, so…be careful, alright?”

Zym chirped at him, a little grumpily, reminding him uncannily of Ezran when he’d been told to keep his fingers out of some animal den or other. For a long, painful second, Callum _fiercely_ missed his brother. Then he pushed it to the side with all the other stuff he didn’t have the time or wherewithal to deal with.

Luckily, it wasn’t long after that that they reached the edge of the towering Xadian forest, and then…well, then, he had plenty of things to distract him.

\---

“These trees are _gigantic!_ ” He exclaimed to Rayla, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, as they passed between the towering tree trunks. The ones at the forest-edge weren’t that large, but he could _see_ the way ahead; before them, the forest canopy towered so far overhead that he thought the trees would happily outsize the castles of Katolis, the uppermost leaves so far away that the light came down yellow-green and verdant, flickering over the ground. “This is _amazing,_ ” He breathed, a minute or so later, when he began to see the glowing mushrooms and colourful plants and luminescent motes in the air-

She smiled at him, tolerant, and patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, Callum.” She said, fondly. “If a few little trees get you excited, you’re going to have to raise your standards.”

“My standards are _fine,_ thank you, have you _seen_ this place?” He said, staring around every-which-way until he pulled something in his neck trying to look too far upwards. He winced, rubbed at the sore muscle, and then focused his attention on the middle-distance.

Ahead, the forest floor erupted into a twisting mass of tree roots thicker than most houses, each of them wreathed in ferns and mushrooms. There were beds of strange flowers everywhere, lines of strange mushrooms along every root and bough, everything was sheathed in thick moss or lichens or _some_ sort of life, and – and he had no idea where to _look._ It was amazing. It was _all_ amazing.

“I _did_ grow up here, Callum.” She informed him, lips twitching, and led him up onto one of the arching roots. “Though I wasn’t exactly _here-_ here much, since my hometown is down over a cliff, and it’s hard to get up here.”

He eyed her, fascinated, and realised she’d hardly spoken about her origins at all before. “….So, how are we going to get down there?” he asked, then paused. “ _If_ we’re going down there. Or are we…not going there?” He couldn’t imagine bypassing Katolis if it happened to be in his way, but, well…maybe there was a reason Rayla had never talked about home? Maybe she didn’t really _want_ to go back?

His thoughts had about a second to start speculating wildly before she rolled her eyes and smiled. “I’m taking you home.” She decreed, with such easy certainty and cheer that all thoughts of her possibly having an unpleasant home situation vanished instantly. “So yes, we’re going down off the cliff.”

Callum squinted, a little wary at the hint of mischief in her smile. “….How?”

Her smile widened. “You’ll see.” She said, secretive, and reached out to pull him by the hand towards the nearby arch of another root. “It’s not far now.”

He shrugged, too fascinated by their surroundings to want to press the issue, and let her lead him onwards.

\---

He was distracted enough by all the plants, mushrooms, magic dirt, three-tailed squirrels, weird birds, musical flowers, and foul-smelling flowers that he almost forgot the issue of the stupid unasked-for probably-wings growing on his back.

Almost.

In the end, it was hard not to notice things that felt increasingly numb and prickly on your back, especially when they twitched and flexed and _moved_ without your say-so, and _especially_ when you started to be able to _feel_ the sensation of that movement in how the numbness and the tingling shifted. He reached over at one point to poke at the skin on a wing-shoulder, once, and was almost alarmed at how…sort-of-normal it felt. Prickly, yeah, like a dead leg, but…

He could feel it.

Callum did not tell Rayla about the rapidly-developing sensation in his wings. He didn’t need to, in the end. They stopped for a rest in the verdant tree-shadows of the ancient forest, and quite matter-of-fact, Rayla pulled his cloak over his shoulder so she could have a look at his wings.

“They’ve grown. The spikes, too.” She announced, to no one’s surprise, and then reached over to untie his jacket-sleeves.

The jacket fell away.

The wings…didn’t.

For a second, Callum was as astonished at the sensation of the still-folded limbs as Rayla was to look at them. Then she whirled to face him, demanding “Are you _making_ them do that? Can you _move_ them now?”

“What? No, I can’t move them at all!” He protested, and…well, he tried again, just to make sure he wasn’t lying. But it…it was like there was nothing _to_ move. He could _feel_ them there, maybe, all heavy and numb and prickling, but he felt no more able to move them than the skin on his body. He tried to describe this sensation to Rayla, and she listened intently, tilting her head.

“Kind of like ears, then.” She concluded, to which he responded with a very sceptical stare.

“ _How_ is it like ears?” he wondered, furrowing his brows at her, and she blinked.

“You know, they kind of move on their own, and you can feel it but not really control it?” She offered, and he stared.

“Human ears don’t do that, Rayla.” He informed her, thinking of the times he’d seen her ears shift in a new light. “I mean, I think. Not that I’ve noticed?”

“…Huh.” She stared at him, a little nonplussed. “I did _think_ your ears were weirdly still, but I didn’t realise they don’t move at _all.”_ She inspected something at the side of his face for a few long seconds, presumably his round human ears, and then concluded “Humans are _weird.”_

“Weird for having not-moving ears?” He asked, and she nodded firmly.

“Very weird.” She agreed. “Point is though, Callum, you _can_ sort of learn to move your ears by focusing extra-hard on what it feels like when they move. Like this,” She concentrated for a second, and her ears twitched noticeably up and down a few times. “See?” Her face fell, then. “But, I guess if you can’t actually _feel_ them moving…”

He shuffled in place, almost guiltily. “I kind of can now.” He admitted, and she straightened, eyes widening. “Sort of? It mostly feels….numb and prickly. Like a leg you sat on too long, you know? But…” he shrugged, and felt the wing-shoulders shrugging along, as if to reinforce the point. “I’m starting to feel them.”

Rayla stared wide-eyed for around two more seconds, then leaned slowly forwards with a finger outstretched.

She poked him on the left wing-shoulder, firmly. “Did you feel that?” She demanded, and he rolled his eyes at her.

“Yes.”

She moved her hand. “What about that?”

He blinked. “No? What did you do?”

“Touched the…wing under-arm? But lightly.” She pursed her lips, pensive, and the rest of their break turned into Rayla finding different ways to test the developing sensitivity of his wings.

In the end, it turned out he could feel pressure, temperature, moderately-light touch, and also could feel the first layer of protruding barb-things – now a good couple inches in length – pulling at something unsettlingly deep in the flesh. Like they went all the way to the bone. Light touch was still beyond him, though, and everything he _could_ feel came across in varying degrees of numbness, prickling, and tingling. The closest to normality was the wing-shoulders, which only felt slightly weird when poked.

“Maybe it’s spreading outwards.” Rayla suggested, when she’d run out of ways to poke him. “And your wing-skin will start feeling more normal further and further out from the shoulders.”

“…Maybe.” He said, dubiously, and looked at her for a long moment. There was something strange, he thought, about how oddly fixated she was on this, on testing the range of sensation, on figuring out how his wings worked. She seemed almost more interested in them than he was.

_Should_ he be more interested in them? …It felt like he should. Probably. He tried to imagine meeting someone else with developing wings, who was also a friend who wouldn’t mind being poked. He’d want to know all about those, wouldn’t he? How the joints bent and folded, and how they felt, and how everything lined up. If it had been Rayla unexpectedly growing wings, he’d want to know everything about them, right? He should probably be more interested in his own wings than he was. Instead, he was just…oddly blank-feeling on the whole matter, in a weird and distant way that implied he probably wasn’t dealing with the whole thing as well as he could be.

“Why are you so interested in them?” He asked, after a pause, to distract himself from his own thoughts. His earlier thought reiterated itself anyway: _if it had been Rayla unexpectedly growing wings, he’d want to know all about them…_

She seemed a little taken-aback at the question, and then frowned a little, as if seriously considering it. “I guess I _have_ been asking a lot of questions, haven’t I?” She said eventually, with a troubled glance over his shoulders.

“Usually it’s me who’s the curious one, right? Kind of a turnaround.” He said, with a teasing smile, and she huffed at him.

“You’re still the curious one, trust me.” She said, dryly. “If I let you, you’d stay in this forest looking at dirt for the next three years, probably.” Well. That was probably fair. “But, I suppose, to answer your question…” She frowned again. “I don’t know. I think – they’re just…growing so fast. It feels like every time I turn around they’ve changed, and it’s…” She searched for a word.

“…Scary?” he suggested, because that was about how he felt about it.

She side-eyed him narrowly, and he recalled that she (and Moonshadow elves in general) had a Thing about admitting to fear. “…I suppose.” She admitted, begrudgingly, and shot his wings an indecipherable look.

He considered them himself, gut churning uncomfortably, and nodded. It made a certain sort of sense. She was coping with the anxiety of having two limbs grow violently from his back by keeping on top of absolutely everything that changed with them, and he…he was doing his best not to think about any of it at all. _Especially_ how much they were changing.

Still. They were a little less unsettling to have, now that he could feel them. A little less like horrifying parasites growing out of his body, and a little more like…he couldn’t really say _a part of him,_ not yet, maybe not _ever._ They were too…weird. Too frightening. Too expected and uninvited and jarring. But they at least had some level of sensation now, and that was…better, in some way that was hard to properly put to words.

As if to purposefully disrupt the vague positivity of that thought, the left one flexed out fully on his back, all three digits stretching, and then folded inwards again. He grimaced, both at the movement he had no control over _and_ the rush of numb tingling that the movement sent through the wing. The hand-joint and its constituent fingers flexed on the right.

“Ugh.” He muttered to himself, stomach roiling, and shook his head. “Can we keep moving now?” he asked Rayla, and she looked at him. Her brows furrowed, eyes worried, and then she reached out to replace his cloak. The jacket-tie didn’t seem as necessary now that the things were holding themselves up. Her fingers lingered around his shoulders, arranging the cloak over his collar, and for a second, he vividly recalled how he’d adjusted his scarf on her before she went to trick Sol Regem. It felt similar. He stared at her for a long moment, feeling oddly bashful when she looked up to meet his eyes.

She still was wearing his scarf, wasn’t she?

Unbidden, he found himself reaching out, a strange gesture of reciprocity, and shifting the scarf around her neck. Just adjusting it a little, so it sat properly. It still looked good on her.

When he looked back up at her, her cheeks were a little pink. “…Didn’t you want this back, at some point?” She asked, after a moment, fingers moving to play with the scarf-tail. The way she looked at him was oddly hesitant, for her.

…Would it be weird to tell her to keep it? It was his scarf, after all. He’d had it for a long time. He…didn’t especially feel its loss, though. And…it made him oddly happy to see it on her.

“…Well, it’s your good luck charm, right?” he said, after a moment, cheeks strangely hot. “Maybe you should hold onto it for a while.”

That wasn’t _giving_ it to her, right? That wasn’t weird? That was…a normal best friend thing to do?

She ducked her head, suppressing a smile. Her fingers wrung the end of the scarf a little more firmly, and though she was still looking away, she looked pleased. “…Thanks.” She said, in the end, and her eyes flickered up to meet his, just for a moment. “I think I will.”

That moment of eye contact lingered, stretching into something that felt as strange and charged as the first time he’d adjusted the scarf on her.

And then it ended, and she stepped away. “Best get going now, then, if we want to get to the cliff soon.” She announced, and whirled away to stride up along another root.

He blinked after her, wondering why his heartbeat felt so strange, and then ushered Zym along beside him.

He supposed he _was_ curious to see what she had planned for this cliff-descent of hers, so…

Quiet, with the wings tucked tight against his back, he followed her through the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes:** The response to chapter 1 of this was surprising, to say the least. I suppose I’ll not underestimate the power of new-season-hype in the future. Glad Boundless has pleased so many of you; thanks for reading!
> 
> **On ears:** Callum and Rayla are kind of mistaken, in that human ears can move on their own. That’s how I learned to move mine – I felt them moving and learned to control the sensation of those muscles in use. Still, I don’t think it’s exactly common.
> 
> **On the wings:** hopefully this chapter clarifies things with regards to what kind of wings he’s growing. If you want to spoil yourself, [here’s a link](https://tenspontaneite.tumblr.com/post/189128210165/with-the-hype-of-s3-approaching-have-this) to a reference image I made for his wings at full growth maybe a month or so before s3 hit.
> 
> **Future updates:** We have now reached the end of pre-written Boundless content. The next update will correspondingly take a much longer time to come out. I have written more Boundless, but it feels more like chapter 4 than 3, so could be a while until this updates.
> 
> In the meantime, please do check out my other tdp fanfiction, Peace Is A Journey, which has been my top writing priority for like seven months now. It has now been updated to accommodate s3 context and information, and I’ll be working on finishing and publishing chapter 11 as soon as possible – which, for reference, I expect to be around 20k long. That story is a _beast_.


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